How fashion helps us express who we are — and
what we stand for
Author : Kaustav Dey
The power of fashion
- Fashion can communicate our differences to the world. And
through this simple act of truth that these differences are no
longer our shame. They have become our expression, the
expression of our unique identity. And we have to express
ourselves, wear what we want.
- Story : I was around ten once at some point, I discovered a box
of my father’s recent things. In it, underneath a bunch of his
school textbooks, was a combination of black corduroy bellbottom pants. And in fact, I fell enamored with them. I might
ne’er see something like them. till that day, all I might ever bestknown and worn was my college uniform, which, in fact, I used
to be pretty grateful for, as a result of from quite a young age, I
might complete I used to be somewhat completely different.
The color of fashion
fi
fi
fi
• I Kaustav has a photograph with grandma from earlier, happier
times. In it, you can't really see what she's wearing, the photo is
in black and white. However, from the way she's smiling in it, you
just know she's wearing color. This is also what fashion can do. It
has the power to ll us with joy, the joy of freedom to choose for
ourselves how we want to look, how we want to live, a freedom
worth ghting for. And ghting for freedom, protest, comes in
many forms.
Fashion’s revolutionaries : it’s designers
- Jean Paul Gaultier taught us that women can be kings.
- Thom Browne, he taught us that men can wear heels.
- Alexander McQueen, in his spring 1999 show, had two giant
robotic arms in the middle of his runway. And as the model,
Shalom Harlow began to spin in between them, these two giant
arms, furtively at rst and then furiously, began to spray color
onto her. McQueen, thus, before he took his own life, taught us
that this body of ours is a canvas, a canvas we get to paint
however we want.
- Somebody who loved this world of fashion was Karar Nushi. He
was a student and actor from Iraq. He loved his vibrant, eclectic
clothes. However, he soon started receiving death threats for
how he looked. He remained unfazed.
- Two thousand miles away in Peshawar, Pakistani transgender
activist Alisha was shot multiple times in May 2016. She was
taken to the hospital, but because she dressed in women's
clothing, she was refused access to either the men's or the
women's wards.
Fashion can give us as a language for dissent
fi
• For the children we are raising, the injustice of today could
become the ordinary of tomorrow. They'll get used to this, and
they, too, might begin to see anything different as
dirty, something to be hated, something to be extinguished, like
lights to be put out, one by one, until darkness becomes a way
of life.
• However, if I today, then you tomorrow, maybe even more of us
someday, if we embrace our right to look like ourselves, then in
the world that's been violently whitewashed, we will become the
pinpricks of color pushing through, much like those widows of
Vrindavan.